Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2012)

Post by brudgers » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 7:08 PM UTC

dhosek wrote: post #35

brudgers wrote: post #15

The slight of hand in standard Western European music theory is that stacking 5ths gives you Lydian and its tritone as the foundational seven pitch scale. Major/Ionian is the fourth mode of this scale. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…except when it comes to science as a basis for an argument from authority. Like all music, people like what they like.

For that matter, the first 5 stacked fifths gives you the standard pentatonic scale. Extending by a fifth on either end and you get the most common accidentals in Western music (if your first seven give C major you’ll get F# and B♭). I think (but I’m not sure) that some of the non-Western microtonal scales extend the tonality by not ignoring the Pythagorean comma when you’ve done the 12th fifth, but by continuing to…

Post by bollu » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 7:38 PM UTC

simonreiff wrote: post #26

I studied harmony and music analysis many years ago as a piano performance major in school. One thing I will say is that harmony really is not an abstract set of symbols on a page representing chords, but rather is a taxonomy of common specific sequences of simultaneously sounding pitches, abstracting away instruments or larger structural considerations and providing a dictionary that defines the most common patterns…

Post by dhosek » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 8:25 PM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #51

dhosek wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that matter, the first 5 stacked fifths gives you the standard pentatonic scale. Extending by a fifth on either end and you get the most common accidentals in Western music (if your first seven give C major you’ll get F# and B♭). I think (but I’m not sure) that some of the non-Western microtonal scales extend the tonality by not ignoring the Pythagorean comma when you’ve done the 12th fifth, but by continuing to…

From C the first six stacked fifths give C Lydian, not C major. (You get an F#, the 5th of B as the seventh pitch, not F the 5th of Bb). You don’t get the perfect fourth until you go all the way around the circle of fifths. You cannot stack perfect fifths and get a major scale.

Post by kansface » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 8:30 PM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #34

klik99 wrote: post #23

I read through a lot of this article and it does a good job explaining the ratios and math behind harmonics and how that makes chords, but ideas like lower ratios are more pleasant and minor chords feel like something is missing (from the article "I do not hear the Harmonic Series itself -- something is missing") is just wrong - if it was right, then the happiest music would be entirely octaves. Though it's built on…

I find the major/minor thing so fascinating. I remember it having the "happy"/"sad" vibes from my earliest memories and have a really hard time with the idea that it could be cultural. But if it's not cultural, then why? Also is the fact that major 9ths have a beach/island vibe cultural due to Brazilian jazz? :-)

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 8:38 PM UTC